In the context of practice session today we started to go back over writing method triangulation, this is when you compare three or pieces of text that can all help support each other helping the writer to have a more convincing argument or point.
As a group we analysed a section of Mulvey's text as well as researching her to find out what her views maybe on the subject in hand, this helps to give a more contextual view on what she is trying get across to the reader.
KEY FACTS ABOUT MULVEY
- Feminist
- Scholar of film/BFI/University
- Psychoanalysis - Freud - Lacan
- High qualifications - Dr.
- Originally written in 1975 - Women’s rights - sexual equality - things have changed
- Avant-garde film maker
- Her most famous essay - critical reputation
KEY POINTS
- Scopophilia (the pleasure at looking at something) on relation to film and it audiences
- How culture reflects society plus inequalities
- Women seen as a sexualised object, almost incidental to the film. PAGE 20 - (Boetticher in Mulvey 2009 [1975] : 20)
- Active/male - passive/female (male is the active force and the female is the passive)
- “To-be-looked-at-ness” a quality - women as sexual object is the leit motive of erotic spectate.
- Mirror phase (as children we don’t know what to think a scrambled ball of feelings and emotions - but then you start to understand yourself as a being you see yourself in a refection you understand yourself as an individual) - John Storey the ego ideal use that to explain what Mulvey is saying.
Storey J - Cultural Theory and Popular Culture
Key Points -
- Analysis what Mulvey has spoke about and has then expanded on that further with his views - "her point is that popular cinema produces and reproduces the 'male-gaze'."
- Male gaze
- Women are the object of male desire
- Scpophilla
Mulvey, Storey and Dyer are all writing about the theory, psychoanalysis and the roles that gender take within film, Storey's and Dyer's views have been influenced by Mulvey's Visual and Other Pleasures. One of the first points Mulvey introduces is the is the different views male and female roles gets for example, "In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female" (Mulvey 2009 [1975]: 19). This suggests that Mulvey is unhappy with the way women are being sexualised in the film industry, this follows her personal views of being a feminist. John Storey, another well known film theorist brings up similar points in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. Storey suggest thats "her point is that popular cinema produces and reproduces the 'male-gaze'." (Storey 1996). They both seem to meet on common ground and understand that at this point in time women were very much sexualised in film, but this shouldn't be happening.
